Dreadful Drive

Given that its main ingredient is human imagination, paranoia is the most powerful of human motivators. Threaten the individual with an existential crisis and desperate measures are guaranteed to ensue. It’s an evil meal to muster: whether cooked for relationships, careers or reputations, paranoia winds itself from one idea into another.

Paranoia gains significant gusto from its use of human creativity. An initial situation is exaggerated and expanded so that minor problems become crisis. Twinged with paranoia the most minor of missteps quickly becomes conspiratorial plot. What one gains from such exaggeration seems likely tied to primal ways of life. Overzealous worry liked helped the human being hunted, but in today’s world we exist in a world of endless minor threats. Ambiguous language, both textual and body, create countless moments to second guess and wonder. For many, the daily minutia of corporate ways becomes a greatest drama.

How can one cope with paranoia? Its likely impossible given its wiring to our primal states. We may work to rationalize or to question, but we’ve little defense against our ancient tools. What protected us for centuries, and made it possible for our genes to exist these thousands of years later, was never cautious confidence. To be alive today is to be a latest link in a long chain of survivors. Perhaps we’re just the latest edition of the paranoid humanoid: always worried, but breathing nonetheless.